1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to devices for retaining visual material, such as sheet protectors for retaining documents or photo album leaves for retaining photographs. More particularly, the present invention relates to such devices that allow the visual material to be presented upon desired backgrounds for aesthetically enhanced presentation.
2. Description of the Related Art
Sheet protectors are devices that have one or more plastic sleeves in which sheet material such as photographs or documents may be inserted and viewed. Sheet protectors are manufactured for a number of consumer markets. For example, there are sheet protectors that are configured as leaves for photo albums. There are also sheet protectors for receiving a single sheet of paper, as well as multiple visual material such as trading cards (e.g., baseball cards).
Sheet protectors are commonly made from sheets of polyolefin, such as polypropylene or polyethylene, or from sheets of polyvinyl chloride. Polypropylene sheets have certain advantages over vinyl as a sheet material for fabricating sheet protectors. For example, polypropylene is substantially chemically inert and will generally not react with dyes and other surface components of photographs and printed material such as trading cards. In addition, polypropylene is physically resistant to extreme heat and cold. Accordingly, polypropylene is highly suitable for archival or long-term storage of visual material.
While highly advantageous for use in fabricating sheet protectors and album leaves, polypropylene does not necessarily inherently provide the user with a wide array of aesthetically pleasing presentation techniques. More specifically, polypropylene is optically transparent and, therefore, offers little by way of visually enhancing the presentation of the material retained thereby. In addition, polypropylene does not readily allow for marking with pens or markers. Accordingly, a user is unable to present the visual material in a desired and personalized visual format.
In view of the foregoing, there remains a need in the art for sheet protectors and album leaves that enable a user to enhance and customize the presentation of visual material.
According to one aspect of the invention, a customizable leaf for retaining visual material includes a first assembly and a second assembly. Each of the assemblies includes a front sheet and a back sheet attached together to form a margin and an accessible pocket. The sheets are preferably made from an optically transparent material such as a thermoplastic. A sleeve is defined between the back sheets of the assemblies. The sleeve is adapted to receive a background that may include text and/or graphics. The background is visible in the margins when received within the sleeve. The accessible pocket is adapted to receive visual material.
The present invention has a number of advantages over conventional album leaves, one of which is the customizable nature of the leaf. For example, one or more backgrounds may be provided, each with text and/or graphics, so that a user may select one of the backgrounds and then insert the selected background into the sleeve. When visual material such as a photograph is then inserted into one of the pockets, the background is visible at the margins. Accordingly, the background provides an aesthetic visible field upon which the photograph is presented. Because of the slidably receivable nature of the sleeve, the user may replace the background with another background having different graphics as desired. Alternatively, the user may customize his or her own background and then insert the same into the sleeve. The sleeve may be configured to retain a pair of backgrounds so that a first side of the leaf may have a background with one type of graphics, while a second side of the leaf may have a background with another type of graphics.
The leaf of the present invention is particularly suitable for albums and binders, either photo albums, scrap books, card-collecting albums, memory books, etc. In a photo album embodiment, each of the assemblies of the leaf may include a plurality of pockets, for example, one or more pockets configured to receive photographs. The leaf may also include a binding portion to enable easy binding by conventional binder structure, for example, a three-ring binder, a post-bound binder, a strap-bound binder, and so on. In addition to photographs, the pockets may be configured to retain other visual sheet material such as trading cards (e.g., baseball cards), mementos for scrap books or memory books, and so on.
Rather than retaining visual sheet material, the leaves may be configured with pockets for retaining storage media such as floppy disks, compact disks, CD-ROMs, DVDs, memory cards, magnetic tapes, etc. In this useful embodiment of the invention, the sleeve may receive documentation associated with the storage medium retained in the pocket (or pockets).
According to another aspect of the invention, a leaf for retaining visual material includes a first sheet made from optically transparent material and a background attached to the front sheet to form a margin and an accessible pocket for receiving visual material. The background is visible in the margin when visual material is received within the pocket. Rather than being removable, the background in this embodiment is permanently disposed within the leaf.
Any and all of the features described herein and combinations of such features are included within the scope of the present invention provided that the features of any such combination are not mutually inconsistent.
Additional aspects, features, and advantages of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from a consideration of the following detailed description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.